Happy Birthday to Urban Sketchers Canberra

February 9th meeting was the 10 year anniversary of what was to become Urban Sketchers Canberra. This was an incredibly satisfying day not because I did a fantastic sketch – I did not but for our birthday the turn out was one of the biggest meetings we have had yet. I did a rough head count and came up with 42. At our first meeting we had 8 people turn up and the wonderful news is 6 of those people are still urban sketching.

Here the group that sketched on Sunday – we even have a banner now!

At the start we were a Canberra based sketching group. Before you start an official group there has to be a bit of history of a group meeting and sketching. Once the group was established for 6 months, thanks to Leonie as she did all the paperwork we went through the process to became a formal Urban Sketchers group.

Left to right our founding members: Leonie Andrews, Steve Lee, Sally Black, Sharon Boggon (me), Martin Perera and Jerry Everard. (links are to instagram accounts)

Since the first get-together in 2015, Urban Sketchers has enabled me not only to meet other sketchers based here in Canberra and make friendships but also to meet and connect with other sketchers world wide. If ever you have the opportunity to attend an Urban Sketchers international symposium or Urban Sketchers AsiaLink go because there is nothing quite like realising how international Urban sketchers as a movement is. Apart from that it is also rewarding to meet and sketch with people around the world and make new sketching buddies.

What did I sketch? On the first meeting was at the National Gallery of Australia and at the time I sketched the Bert Flugelman sculpture “Cones”. We met again at the same place so I felt it was appropriate to sketch the sculpture again.

Since at the moment I am using a concertina sketchbook I am still juggling with it and getting used to not having a solid back to the paper. At times I was sketching with the paper resting on my knee! I do have a lightweight board that I can use as a drawing board but I had not anticipated using more than one opening of the sketchbook. Next time I will remember to bring it! I am still learning after 10 years so that is great.

Thanks to Mandy Cox and Kirsty Young for the group photos.

Some related history and resources

If you are interested in our meetings you can find detail in the Urban Sketchers Canberra group on Facebook here.

At the time Leonie Andrews wrote a blog post “This could be the start of something big”

I also wrote about it in my long gone, and wiped from the servers, blog. Fortunately The Internet Archive has a copy of “A New Sketchers Group in Canberra”

Urban Sketchers is a global network of people who draw the cities they live in and the places they travel to. Their slogan is to see the world one drawing at a time. You can find out more from the Urban sketchers website where there is a global directory of groups. If you are interested in finding out more about a group in your town or city check out the Chapter map here.

The NGA provides more information about Bert Flugelman on their website.